Venturing Out

No pictures today as I left my camera at home attached to the PC.

I forgot to mention last night that the boys stumbled across Star Wars on German TV. They can pretty much fill in the lines themselves, so they found it hilariously funny. That entertained them for a good 5 minutes.

Today we got up at a normal hour – dare I hope that we are all adjusted? I ventured on my daily trip to the grocery store. I was quite impressed with myself because I figured out how to buy oatmeal and rice. Pretty easy, but I was a bit worried that I was getting some other grain as the oatmeal is ground a bit finer here. I brought a shoulder bag and was able to carry more of the heavy liquids than in the past. I really need to get myself a granny cart. My biggest struggle at the store was trying to figure out what garbage bags to buy. Instead of paying for monthly garbage service in Zurich, you pay for the garbage pickup in the price of the garbage bag. There were a lot of different bags and I couldn't figure out which one we were supposed to be using, so I thought I'd try again another day.

We walked to the nearest train ticket center (about ½ mile) and figured out how to buy some tickets. We could have gotten on a bus earlier, but we didn't have tickets and John, already the good Swiss resident, didn't want to board a bus without a ticket. At the center, I bought a monthly pass plus a 3 year ½ off card, John got an annual pass, and the kids all got annual passes. The kids only have to pay $20 to ride any train in Switzerland for the year, assuming they are with either John or myself. What a bargain! Even better, the Swiss don't seem to comprehend the idea of having 3 children in their system, so the 3^rd one is free. Technically, Abbie is free until she is 6, but the person we had helping us understood the quirk of the system and let us process all 3 tickets today. We are still debating on whether Lucky needs a train pass. If she ends up traveling to school with me regularly to join up with the "dog walking club", I'll get her a ticket. While it seems easy to buy a few train tickets, we were quite impressed that we were able to figure out what we wanted/needed and had all the right paperwork with us (passports, temporary address, zones we travel, and passport photos). I held off on getting myself an annual pass until I figure out how much I'll take the train when we move to our permanent housing. It may be cheaper to just use my ½ card to get discounted tickets. If you're wondering why John didn't get an annual pass (I'm figuring Craig will be sure to note the absence), he gets it from work.

From there, we rewarded the kids with a stop at a great toy store on Banhoffstrasse. It is 4 stories and has a slide that runs from the ground floor to the basement. The kids thought it was a fast, fun slide! The boys fell in love with some slot car racing system that was a mere 450 SFr. (around $400 USD). Abbie fell in love with pretty much everything in the store. John had a heart attack over the price of board games ($60 for Monopoly anyone?). We left the store empty handed, but had fun "shopping with our eyes" as John put it.

For lunch, we each had a soda, pizza, and ice cream for dessert. (Ben & Jerrys – mmmm.) C.J. branched out and had the chocolate brownie. Of course, right after we left the pizza restaurant we found an ice cream stand that had mint chip gelato. C.J. made a note of the location since it is his all time favorite ice cream. He plans to make a directory of all necessary stops in Zurich. Smart kid! Lunch set us back $100, so you can get an idea how expensive it is to eat/live here.

After lunch, we knew we had to do an activity – 3 siblings in a small apartment for the afternoon just spells trouble. John had heard about this "Path of the Planets" hiking trail where you hike from Uetliberg, Top of Zurich, to Felsenegg to get a panorama of Lake Zurich, the Alps, and the city of Zurich. There is a scale model of the solar system along the way. We figured the kids would have fun exploring the models, so we purchased the "add on" train tickets that we needed to our monthly passes and took the 20 minute train ride from Zurich city center to Uetilberg. Brendan was happy to finally be riding a "real train" which he voted was definitely a step above BART. The train takes you right to the start of the hiking trail – very convenient. Somehow John and I had both figured that the "scale model of the solar system" would involve planets that the kids could climb, etc. Well, the sun was about 2-3 feet in diameter. By the time we got to earth, the kids realized that they were now searching for "marbles" on our hiking path. The planets were definitely to scale – John and I just hadn't understood how big the sun would need to be to make the other planets into climbing structures. We made it to Uranus (about a one hour hike) and decided to turn around because it was overcast. Turning around was a bit of a shock for the kids who somehow thought that we were on a loop or would magically have a car/train pick us up at the end. Fortunately (?), it started to rain which gave the kids something else to think about. We felt Swiss since we didn't let a little rain stop our hiking (not that we had a choice at that point!). The trail was beautiful, if a bit hilly, and we understood how hiking became a passion for locals. We had beautiful views of the lake and the city as well as some countryside. We even ran into a few cows.

We then took the train, 2 trams, and a bus back to our apartment. We are feeling quite proud of our ability to navigate the Swiss public transit system! I made dinner (chicken and pepper stir fry over rice) and we played some games of Old Maid, Crazy Eights, and Go Fish before putting the kids to bed. John and I are exhausted as well. Lucky is hiding under C.J.'s bed. I think the boys told her about the hike we took without her and she's bitter.

Tomorrow I get to see our permanent house and we're getting registered. We wanted to get a bank account as well, but the relocation person thought that might stretch the kids' patience and we should spread it out a bit. We're having dinner with our first visitors to Zurich from Pleasanton! Our air shipment has arrived in Zurich and is being processed through customs, so we may get that delivery on Wednesday.